The effect of simultaneous sponsorship of rival football teams

The present study investigated the impact of team identification and team-sponsor fit on the sponsor's brand equity. The study's main theoretical references are (a) the Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979); (b) the Schema Theory (Singer, 1968) and (c) the Associative Network Theories (Collins & Loftus, 1975), both about the functioning of the human memory; and (d) customer-based brand equity (Keller, 1993). Research was conducted in Porto Alegre, RS, a Brazilian city where rival football (soccer) teams Grêmio and Internacional share their main sponsors, Banrisul and Unimed, since 2001 and 2002, respectively, a rare context that was previously studied only once before (Davies, Veloutsou, & Costa, 2006). The valid sample comprised 2,000 fans of both teams. The sample was non-probabilistic with equal gender and team quotas. Data analysis was performed using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA); and the reliability, convergent, discriminant and nomological validity of the constructs were verified. To test the substantive hypotheses, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using the ADF technique was applied. The empirical results suggest that, in the studied context, the sponsor's brand equity is more influenced by team-sponsor fit than by team identification, which is different from a non-rivalry sponsorship context.